The sound of an engine reaches us a few minutes before noon, rolling up the river corridor from the south, right around the hour Reynolds would be dialing a dead phone from his Fairbanks office.
Aris freezes with a tin mug halfway to her mouth. "Plane?"
"Beaver." I'd know that radial engine in my sleep. "That's Hank."
He comes in low over the river, maybe two hundred feet off the deck, skis flashing in the sun. The wings waggle twice, hello, and then he banks wide and lines up on the gravel bar below camp. The side window is open. A dark shape tumbles out, drops in a clean arc, and lands with a thump we feel through our boots.
Then he's gone, droning north like a man with other errands.
We walk out to the bar together. It's a canvas mail bag, army surplus, sand-weighted at the bottom and tied off with baling twine. May's block lettering is stenciled on the side: THORNE EXPEDITION. AIRMAIL.
Aris kneels on the frozen gravel and picks at the knot. Her gloved hands fumble it twice before it gives.
Inside, six cinnamon rolls sit wrapped in so many layers of foil they're still faintly warm at the center, packed in with two pairs of wool socks, a paperback western with a broken spine and a moose on the cover, and an envelope with her name on it in May's looping cursive.
Taped to the foil is an itemized invoice. Rhys has billed us for six rolls, two pairs of socks, one previously enjoyed novel, and "aerial delivery services," then crossed out every line and circled the zero balance at the bottom. Documented for the record, it says.
"My brother would invoice a sunset if he thought it'd annoy someone," I tell her.
She doesn't laugh. She's reading May's note, and her eyes have gone glassy.
She hands it over without a word.
Hank flies the river every few days now, whether you like it or not. We figured the silence wasn't your idea. Wave if you're alive. Eat the rolls before Nash does. May.
"They don't even know what happened." Her voice cracks in the middle. "Reynolds is marking a red X next to my name right now, and these people loaded a plane."
"That's how it works out here. You go quiet, somebody comes looking."
She holds a foil bundle against her chest like a hot-water bottle. "I met them once, Nash. Once, and I want a scone from May Sweeney's basket. Is that crazy?"
"That's Port Promise," I say. "It does that to people."
We split a cinnamon roll standing right there on the gravel bar, breath steaming, fingers sticky in the cold. She closes her eyes on the first bite, and I have to look away, out at the empty sky where the Beaver disappeared.
When we head back up the bank, Aris stops, turns, and waves at the long silver line of the river, at nobody at all.
I don't tell her Hank's forty miles gone. Some messages get through anyway.
Back at camp, the solar indicator is still crawling toward charged.
"A rest day," Aris says, looking at the low-profile shelter. "In a survival sack."
"It's ten below zero," I say, watching her shiver despite the sunshine. "And staring at a battery indicator won't make it charge faster. Inside. We conserve heat."
We crawl back into the nylon cocoon. If the casing felt small last night, in the daylight it feels microscopic. The orange walls seem to press in on us, glowing with a diffuse, suffocating light.
The air inside is thick with the scent of damp wool and us. Every breath we take adds moisture to the space; I can already see frost crystals forming along the seams of the roof, delicate and jagged.
"It's loud," Aris whispers, lying on her back and staring up at the fabric.
"The river," I say. "Ice shifting. It expands in the sun."
Outside, a deep, resonant boom echoes through the valley, sounding uncomfortably like a cannon shot.
Aris flinches, her hand seeking mine in the narrow space between our bodies. "It sounds like it's breaking."
"It's just settling. It's loudest when it's strongest."
